Lower back pain. Do you have to learn to live with it?

No.

The end.

Only kidding.

When you suffer from back pain, it is likely that it is something you have experienced before, either at the same level or to a lesser level. Usually this pain follows a very repeatable pattern and cycles over and over again. And usually people end up feeling pretty hopeless and like they should just accept this is their future now.

This is not true. I am a strong believer that people shouldn’t just accept that their situation is hopeless, there is always something you CAN do to help. I’m not saying that every single type of back issue is curable. But what I am saying is that there is always something you can do to help, even if it is to improve by 5% or 10% that is better than nothing right? Who knows, a gentle 5-10% consistent improvement over time will add up to 100% one day right? I think that’s how math works.

As we mentioned in our ‘Why me?’ blog, lower back pain usually works in cycles. Each one worse than the one before it. Either longer in duration or more severe/intense levels of pain felt. Remember, pain is an experience created in the brain and is designed to sense a threat in the body (read more here). So when people ask me if they have to learn to live with this pain I always say…

“No.”

If there is pain, there is a threat somewhere in the body to set this alarm off. Something is causing your brain to freak out and send pain signals over and over again. If the alarm in your house was going off, would you leave it? Or would you grab a baseball bat and creep downstairs to find out what’s going on? Pain is the same. When you’re in pain you need to investigate why.

You wouldn’t just accept you’re being burgled or there’s a fire and try to sleep through the alarms now would you? So if you’ve been told you need to just accept what is going on do you have to accept it? Of course not, you need to find a reason why. Find something you can do to help. Even if it is a 5% improvement it is a step in the right direction. If you keep making improvements like that eventually you’ll reach close to 100% right?

For us, simply just saying ‘it’s just something I’ve got to live with’ isn’t an answer. Just learning to live with something will not help it to go away. You need to be doing the correct things to help this back problem go away. One of my biggest gripes in the healthcare industry (when it comes to the back is the instance) is telling people what they CAN’T do rather than what they CAN do. If you sit and tell a runner they can’t run, you’ve lost them. Instead why not listen to when they say I can run up to a point. Or when they say as soon as I go at a certain pace it hurts. There is your marker. They can run or move, just not past that point. Over time we can work to move that point further forward to where it isn’t a problem anymore. The way we do that is through X, Y, Z exercises and treatment interventions. Isn’t that a much better experience? Isn’t that going to make you want to do what is asked? Putting you in control of your treatment plan with a clear goal and progression. That is how you start to make progress on your back and that is why you do not need to ‘just live with it’.

Until next time,

Oliver Attoe

Sports Therapist.